Tag: Greg Miller

Bookmarked Learning recognition beyond an ATAR by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Despite the need to engage in rigorous processes to develop Learner Profiles for students, in mid December when HSC/VCE/SACE etc., and ATAR results are released, we will still see the media bombard us with league style comparisons of schools and their end of year results. There will also be many schools, promoting enviable ATAR results of students suited to an examination approach to learning. However, I remain positive that one day, and one day soon, each one of our students will leave each one of our schools with more than one number on one day and a certificate filled with only marks and bands. I look forward to the day, hopefully one day soon, where we will have a Learner Profile which showcases the very best of who a young adult is and what they can do so they can find their place of meaning in this rapidly changing world.

Greg Miller talks about the various efforts in Australia to recognise learning beyond ATAR. This includes New South Wales Digital Wallet, South Australian Learner Profile Pilot Project and the New Metrics Project. It will be interesting to see how technology develops to accommodate these changes, whether it be timetables and assessment.
Replied to Farewell to designing and establishing a ‘new normal’. by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

What a privilege it has been to be the Foundation Principal of St Luke’s! I have appreciated playing a small part in a big team. I will be forever thankful for the staff who trusted me and I leave being in awe of their work.

Congratulations Greg. I have really enjoyed following your journey. Thank you for openly sharing. Good luck with whatever the future has to bring.
Liked ‘New opportunities’: How one school dumped the traditional 9-3 day by Jordan Baker (The Sydney Morning Herald)

St Luke’s Catholic College, a kindergarten to year 12 school in Marsden Park, opens at 6.30am and closes almost 12 hours later. When formal classes finish at 2.40pm, primary aged students can stay for “master classes” run by teachers at after-school care.

On Fridays, parents can opt to pick their primary-aged children up at midday. And three mornings a week, senior high school students can opt for a supervised study session at 8.30, or they can stay in bed and start at 10 – a decision driven by research into sleep and the teenage brain.

Replied to Exams and contemporary learning – it’s all upside down! by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

As principal of St Luke’s, I challenge students to answer three questions:

  • Who am I?
  • What can I do?
  • What problems do I want to solve?

You won’t find any one of these three questions on a HSC paper. I dare say that none of those questions appear in any examinations for school systems across the world. However, in answering these three questions throughout their time at St Luke’s, students are more able to understand their SIM (strengths, interests and motivations), engage with concepts such as ‘flow’ and ‘purpose’, and therefore enter a post school world with confidence by knowing where they can contribute.

Greg, if the focus for learners is about identifying problems worth solving, I wonder where that leaves teachers and what it means for them?
Replied to The HSC – what it is and what it needs to be. by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Whilst the HSC has been in continuous review for decades it now needs refurbishment. In doing so, we need to keep the best of what it offers and replace what needs to go with new metrics which offer a far more complete picture of each young adult’s knowledge, understanding, skills, capabilities and dispositions, and how they are applied.

As I have said, what the HSC is and what it needs to be are two very different things.

Greg, this seems to be the wicked problem of our time. It has been interesting to see various universities form connections with schools, such as Templestowe and Swinburne University. The problem is that the status quo still seems to be based on scores and ranking.

Intrigued with University of Melbourne’s ‘New Metrics’ program. They have a bit of history with exploring new areas for assessment with the ATC21s program (whitepaper can be found here), however I am not sure what really came of that work.

Liked Paving a smooth career pathway for students by Brett Henebery (The Educator)

St Luke’s Catholic College in Sydney is employing the use of Life Coaches from Innerzone to work with teachers, and in doing so, help students unlock their potential by answering three important questions: ‘Who am I?’ ‘What are my strengths?’ and ‘What problems can I solve?’.

Through the program, which launched in 2017, students from Year 7 to 10 have learned how to unpack their strengths, interests and motivators (SIM) and discover their talents through purposeful passion projects with the intention of making life better for others.

Replied to Feedback on the Capabilities for a Changing World. by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Our next challenge is to turn an improving ‘back end’ tracking tool into a more interactive and intuitive online experience for students and parents which engages them more than twice a year.

Thank you Greg for continuing to share the journey of your school. I am really intrigued as to how well the students are able to speak to this data?
Replied to Coronavirus and the VUCA world by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Never have I better understood the term ‘VUCA’ than this past week. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity were at levels I have not experienced before in my place of work.

Thank you Greg for sharing your perspective on the current crisis. My wife has actually stepped up into a deputy principal position this year and it has been intriguing seeing the challenges from both a system and a school level. For her it has certainly been a trial by fire. There is only so much that we can be prepared.

I liked your point about ‘weekyears’:

No doubt, there will be many more ‘weekyears’ like it in the months to come!

It goes with the Lenin quote doing the rounds at the moment:

There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.

Good luck with the weeks and months ahead. Stay safe. Thoughts with you are your community.

Liked Steve Jobs, Success and P2P @stluke’s by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

About 2 weeks ago, like all schools, St Luke’s staff were right in the middle of reports, maintaining high standards for the remainder of the 2019 school year and, with ongoing employment of 30 staff for next year, even looking ahead to 2020.
At the same time, I read an article penned by Steve Jobs, after which, I shared an email with staff. It appears below.

Replied to An Online Student Dashboard by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Any student online dashboard will need to be far more interactive than a semester report. It will need to provide more information and be far more more readily available, more often. However, 24/7 access will not be something that St Luke’s will provide. The last thing any child needs is a parent or teacher hovering over them for incremental steps that may take days or weeks to notice and record.

This sounds really interesting Greg. I really like your point about being both interactive, but also managed in regards to when information is available. My question with a dashboard is always what data? How is it structured? Is there any possibility it could be misinterpreted?

I also wonder how this fits with the idea of digital portfolios and student voice? Is it a case of who controls the data controls the learning?

Replied to Inquiry focused professional learning by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Effective professional learning is collaborative, inquiry focused and aligned with immediate priority areas of the school. Over the course of this term, teachers at St Luke’s Catholic College have framed their professional learning in response to a driving question.
Initially,  a set of Draft I…

Love the lines of inquiry Greg. I am really intrigued by the challenge of ‘timetables’, especially in balancing the various systemic and contextual requirements.

I asked Peter Hutton at EC17 how Templestowe College managed personalised learning and timetables. His answer was to treat every class like a VCE block.

Having managed a timetable in a P-9, I felt that there were often elements that the junior classes had to adopt in order to fit in with the secondary constraints. Not sure how that aspect plays out within your school?

RSVPed

This looks like a fantastic day of learning associated with capabilities and AI. I’d definitely be interested if I were closer. Will need to stick to following from afar.
Replied to Parent Involvement and Engagement by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Since the inception of St Luke’s in February 2017, one of the ongoing challenges of designing a ‘new normal’ for preschool to post school has been to clarify how we work in partnership with parents to nurture faith filled curious children to become creative contributors and innovative problem …

Always left inspired by the open sharing of your schools journey Greg. I remember parent engagement was my ‘moonshot’ that I took away from my Google experience:

How Might We ENGAGE PARENTS in a CULTURAL SHIFT to make RELATIONSHIPS and CONNECTIONS the focus of learning?

Although I may not have achieved the goals that I was aspiring towards, it is something which I feel grounds a lot of my work.

Replied to Detractors from afar by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Over the last few weeks St Luke’s Marsden Park found itself in the news more than usual. That can be partly explained by our appearance on ABC’s 7:30, a television program with a national profile. Overall, the story portrayed St Luke’s in a positive light; however, the assertions by Jennifer Buckingham from the Centre of Independent Studies  that, “the approach taken at St Luke’s really is an experiment” and, “there is a great risk that this experiment will fail”, could not be left unchallenged.

This is a great reflection on the journey that you have started at St Luke’s. I think that it fits with the idea of change through encouragement, rather than revolution. To me it fits with the model of change being pushed by groups like Agile Schools, where bit by bit education is progressively transformed. Is this an experiment? Maybe, but the question I have is what support and structures are put in place to support such changes. I think where things becomes undone is where we think it is just one thing that will make all the difference. I recently read The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and have been left with the reality that all we can do is inoculate ourselves against the treat of the unexpected result by spreading our investments, rather than betting on a unicorn. I wonder if this is a part of what Gert Biesta describes as the beautiful risk of education.

Having said all this, I was also left wondering (and worrying) as to what detractors wish as an outcome by making the case about experimenting in school? Does Jennifer expect you to stop everything you are doing and pivot to what someone else is doing? In some ways this reminds me of the uproar involving Johanna O’Farrell from a few years ago. Although tribes are good at building a sense of community, there are times I wonder if they really evolve the conversation? I think that this is the problem that groups like Team Human and #ProSocialWeb are trying to grapple with.

Replied to New Tech High and the Post School World by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

A stand out take away for me was how much precision there is to connect senior students to the post school world whilst they are still at school. With that comes school based requirements additional to the required by the state for graduation.

Greg, I guess this celebration of pathways is what Greg Whitby is trying to capture through his discussion of ‘pre-to-post schooling‘? It also reminds me of what Todd Rose captures in his book The End of Average.
Liked Napa Junction Elementary School by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Principal, Donna Drago, courageously introduced Project Based Learning 5 years ago, 5 yeas after she started as principal at the school. Donna was quickly joined by champions on staff. Together, and over time, the results, outcomes and learning growth of students have all validated Donna’s decision.

Replied to Catch them doing good by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Instead of handing out rewards, merits, stickers and stamps, I am strong in the belief that we are better to catch students ‘doing good’ in the moment. Private words of encouragement in the moment have greater impact than the public monthly awards at assemblies, often when the moment has passed and been forgotten.

Great post Greg. It reminds me of a post I wrote a few years ago on the problems associated with the ‘Student of the Week‘.

In a recent episode of Modern Learners Podcast,Stephanie Rogen suggests that spending time on the why (ex

Replied to What is the ‘new normal’? by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Recently, I was asked to offer my insights into what the ‘new normal’ is. The comparative table below is by no means comprehensive, and nor is St Luke’s covering all of the ‘new normals’ listed below. However, the table offers a reference point, one which is continually updated and changed, just like a ‘start up’ I suppose.

This is a great provocation Greg. So much to think about. I really like your point about changes to curriculum and assessment.

One thing that I read lately is a move from Bring Your Own Device to Bring Your Own Data. This then places students at the heart of data.

Also on: Read Write Collect

Replied to The NSW Curriculum – Less is Best. by gregmiller68 (Learn and Lead)

Who knows what will come of the NSW Curriculum Review? I trust that Professor Geoff Masters and his team will declutter the curriculum by taking a ‘Less is Best’ approach.

It will be interesting Greg what comes of the review. When you say ‘less is best’ I am reminded of New Zealand, my only concern though is whose ‘less’ is best? If this simply results in a ‘back to basics’, then I will be concerned.